Sunday, February 26, 2023

Lamar Johnson: Missouri: Kansas City Star Editorial Board: Question of the day: "Ricky Kidd. Carrody Buchhorn. Keith Carnes. Floyd Bledsoe. Kevin Strickland. Lamonte McIntyre. Olin “Pete” Coones Jr. What did they all have in common? The answer, according to The Kansas City Star: Missouri or Kansas threw all of them behind bars — many of them for a long, long time — for crimes they swore they didn’t commit. And all have been freed in the past few years alone after a variety of injustices came to light — perjury, official misconduct, bad forensic science — making it clear that the states got it wrong the first time." PS: Theme of the editorial: "If you're tough on crime, celebrate MO(Missouri) freeing Lamar Johnson


EDITORIAL: "If you're tough on crime, celebrate MO freeing Lamar Johnson," by The Kansas City Star Editorial Board.

 PHOTO CAPTION: "It wasn’t justice that he served more than half his life in prison for a murder two other men confessed to."

 GIST:"Ricky Kidd. Carrody Buchhorn. Keith Carnes. Floyd Bledsoe. Kevin Strickland. Lamonte McIntyre. Olin “Pete” Coones Jr. Missouri or Kansas threw all of them behind bars — many of them for a long, long time — for crimes they swore they didn’t commit. 

And all have been freed in the past few years alone after a variety of injustices came to light — perjury, official misconduct, bad forensic science — making it clear that the states got it wrong the first time. 

Add to that shameful list Lamar Johnson, who will finally walk free after St. Louis-area Circuit Judge David C. Mason examined the evidence against his guilt Tuesday, and found it “clear and convincing.”  (He did. HL); 

The unjust conviction will be vacated after Johnson spent more than half his life locked up.

 The National Registry of Exonerations counts 52 people exonerated in Missouri since 1991 (not yet including Johnson), and 18 in Kansas since 1992. 

If you believe in justice, and that the government officials we elect and police we hire are subject to basic human fallibility, then those 70-some wrong convictions we know about likely already infuriate you. 

And what, then, about the other innocents surely now in jail cells whose circumstances haven’t been reviewed? 

In Johnson’s case, the two men who confessed to the 1994 fatal shooting of Markus Boyd ended up convicted themselves (though one for an unrelated crime). 

But in too many other instances, when an innocent is incarcerated, that means the guilty still walk among us. How is that justice? If your loved one were a victim, wouldn’t you be outraged that the real perpetrator went free while someone else paid the price? Don’t confuse calls for mercy with demands for justice. 

It’s one thing for principled death penalty opponents to ask a governor to stay an execution, or grant clemency to a prisoner sentenced to death. 

It’s entirely different to insist that the government prove its case when serious doubts are raised about whether someone was put away unjustly. 

Missouri has a long history of resolutely defending convictions — and of getting it wrong. 

A state lawyer notoriously testified to the Missouri Supreme Court in 2001 that yes, “even if we find that (the defendant) is actually innocent,” the attorney general’s office would continue to press for his execution.

Lamar Johnson will never get back the years he lost. 

And it remains to see whether he’ll get the immense compensation he deserves for the inequity. 

That relief is far from assured.

 But if you consider yourself a law-and-order type, you have zero right to grumble today. 

Bad convictions don’t cut down on crime. In fact, they invite more of it by keeping the wrong people on the streets. 

And when a crooked police officer is found out and removed from the force, that’s nothing but a net good for the department. 

The fight against crime is obviously one of the most important parts of self-governance. Reexamining the work of the law enforcement and courts we respect to right their mistakes — and then working to prevent more of them — is a huge part of supporting that fight.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;

SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:


https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985


FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."


Lawyer Radha Natarajan:


Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;

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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!


Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;


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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:


David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”


https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-1234880143/


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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;

SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:


https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985


FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."


Lawyer Radha Natarajan:


Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;

—————————————————————————————————


FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!


Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;


------------------------------------------------------------------


YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:


David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”


https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-1234880143/


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